He makes only one exception. A miner or speculator in mines may be many times a millionaire and yet remain in good standing in the Populist party. The Populist has ineradicably fixed in his mind the belief that silver is a cheap metal, and that silver money is, while not fiat money, still a long step toward it. Silver is connected in his mind with scaling down debts, the partial repudiation of obligations, and other measures aimed at those odious moneyed tyrants who lend money to persons who insist upon borrowing, or who have put their ill-gotten gains in saving banks and kindred wicked institutions for the encouragement of the vice of thrift. These pleasurable associations quite outweigh, with the Populist, the fact that the silver man himself is rich. He is even for the moment blind to the further fact that these pro-silver men, like Senator Stewart, Governor Altgeld, and their compeers, strenuously insist that the obligations to themselves shall be liquidated in gold; indeed this particular idiosyncrasy of the silver leaders is not much frowned upon by the bulk of the Populists, because it has at least the merit of savoring strongly of “doing” one’s creditors. Not even the fact that rich silver mine owners may have earned their money honestly can outweigh the other fact that they champion a species of currency which will make most thrifty and honest men poorer, in the minds of the truly logical Populist. But Mr. Sewall has no fictitious advantage in the way of owing his wealth to silver. He has made his money precisely as the most loathed reprobate of Wall Street--or of New York, which the average Populist regards as synonymous with Wall Street--has made his. The average Populist does not draw fine distinctions. There are in New York, as in other large cities, scoundrels of great wealth who have made their money by means skilfully calculated to come just outside the line of criminality. There are other men who have made their money exactly as the successful miner or farmer makes his,--that is, by the exercise of shrewdness, business daring, energy and thrift. But the Populist draws no line of division between these two classes. They have made money, and that is enough. One may have built railroads and the other have wrecked them, but they are both railroad men in his eyes, and that is all. One may have swindled his creditors, and the other built up a bank which has been of incalculable benefit to all who have had dealings with it, but to the Populist they are both gold bugs, and as such noxious. Mr. Sewall is the type of man the contemplation of which usually throws a Populist orator into spasms. But it happens that he believes in free silver, just as other very respectable men believe in spirit rapping, or the faith-cure, or Buddhism, or pilgrimages to Lourdes, or the foot of a graveyard rabbit. There are very able men and very lovely women who believe in each or all of these, and there are a much larger number who believe in free silver.